Black Faculty at Harvard: 25 Years of Vibrant History

Thomson Professor of Government Martin I., Kilson, the first Black faculty member tenured in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, calls himself "the first Black in."

"I've been a helping hand type of first Black in," says Kilson, who first arrived at Harvard to begin study for his doctorate in 1953.

Over the next two decades, as Kilson rose through Harvard's academic ranks, the College slowly transformed itself from the white male bastion of the early decades of this century to a conflicted war camp of the late 1960s. Born of that conflict was a transformation of Harvard's faculty and student body.

As one of so few Black faculty members or administrators, Kilson, who received tenure in 1969, says he had to be cautious about his activism.

"In general my managing technique...was pragmatic, he says. "You play it by ear, decide what kinds of issues you'll do battle on."

The College's Black enrollment surged in 1963, and another enormous leap occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.

The transformation "happened on my watch," Kilson says. "I made an especial effort to be open to the growing Black student population."

But with those large increases, and with the turmoil of the late sixties, came explosions that were to profoundly affect Kilson and other Black faculty.

Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who received tenure in 1974, was deeply influenced by the conflicts of the era. A Massachusetts native, he left Harvard Divinity School after graduation in 1968 to teach at the Tuskegee Institute.

"I decided I was going to go to the South and see what it was like to be young, male and Black in a Southern world," he says. "They were still murdering people by night the Klan still lived."

When Harvard called him back as an assistant professor in 1970, he returned not to the peaceful atmosphere he recalled, but a war zone of a campus under siege.

"It was hell," he says. "I wouldn't regret five minutes of it."

But like Kilson, who co-founded a Black student group and publication and spear-headed Ivy League efforts to recruit Black first-year students, Gomes found the times demanded special roles for Black faculty.

"I spent a great deal of time trying to bring groups of people together," he says.

The crisis helped bring on changes in Harvard's faculty as the influential Rosovsky Report of 1969 approved the creation of an Afro-American Studies department and students demanded the addition of Black professors.

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, the only Black administrator during the period, says the FAS was under great pressure from students to diversity its faculty.

"Students made lots of demands at that time," says Epps. "I think the University hired people as a political response."

Kilson considers himself "the first Black in," but he wasn't the last Ewart G. Guineer '33, the first chair of the newly born Afro-American Studies department, was also tenured in 1969 Gomes arrived in 1970, and Kenneth Dike was tenured in 1970.

Other Black faculty, including historian Nathan I. Huggins '59 Professor of Sociology Orlando Patterson arrived in the early 1970.